Sept 5 2013

Whoops. It’s been a while, folks!

Okay well….

Monday:

First day of teaching! Yikes!

So we went there for our first breakfast, not too bad. Not exactly a ton of breakfast foods to be honest, though. Still eggs with spices and weird noodles… They usually have fruit and/or rolls at every meal, however, and that’s definitely my favorite. Seriously. The Americans that we are, we’re usually walking out with a roll. And yes, we do get weird looks. Shame on us.

They had a morning assembly. They have us gorgeous flowers and pinned them to our chests. The entire assembly was at least an hour long, with everyone standing, in the chilly air. Towards the end, it started sprinkling but that didn’t dissuade anyone, it would seem. It started out with five boys getting the flag hosted- that was pretty awesome. Holding it close until it was on the pole, one boy whipped it out majestically in quite a pose as it started to rise. Definitely impressive!

Lots of Chinese talks. They had two honor students, boy and girl, talk at one point. Then we all introduced ourselves [Abby did so in Chinese], which was definitely awkward since we didn’t plan anything out, and then we remained standing. Katie stood next to Nicole, who started to look like she was about to faint- she was wavering- so Katie led her off to get some water. It saved them another twenty minutes of standing, lucky tykes. Still, it was pretty impressive. We took a picture or two and then one of our bosses jumped in.

Okay, I don’t remember his name. But he’s around all the time, one of the principles or anything, because I don’t think he teaches. Though he doesn’t speak English, he is very enthusiastic and loves waving to us. We really like him, he’s so nice!

Anyways, the assembly finally over- man those kids were cute! And there were so many of them! I can’t believe they could stay still like that at their age. Although Abby and Greg did point out, since they could see the younger kids better, that the ones in the back were goofing off and pushing each other and such.

So we headed up to our area. Nicole found us in our office setting up, and finally handed out our schedules! Not too bad timing, since Abby was the first to teach about an hour later. I started trying to get an idea of how to work things out- I had Friday off, but I taught four classes on Tuesday- and start planning a few things out as well as fiddling on the computer, of course.

Oh, and I skyped home! That was fun- it was still Sunday evening for the family which was definitely odd, but it wasn’t too weird, I suppose. Unfortunately their video feed wasn’t really working so I couldn’t see a lot of what was going on, but it was nice to talk to them all the same since we hadn’t really chatted since I had left!

Soon after, Abby came back from her first class- like most of our classes, it was a bit of a disaster. Kids are getting back into the rhythm of school- we all know that takes a while- we’re supposed to be the cool English teachers from America, they are seeing friends again, and can’t really shut up.

Nice thoughts to head to my two classes, eh?

We’d been warned to have more than one back up in teaching, so I had a few. And I ended up using most of them for both of my Grade 3 classes I taught that first day. But MAN that noise… so rowdy. Most of them are cheerful and shouting “Teacher! Teacher!” Which has a nice aspect to it- but still, when you’re trying to talk… and they don’t understand a lot of what you say, no matter their age or grade.

Speaking of- they don’t really do Grade by age too much. We don’t really know how they do it. It’s definitely a bit… odd.  Overall my Grade 3 classes aren’t too off- most are about the age 8, so it’s not too bad.

Anyways, it was insane. I had no idea how I was going to do this every week.

Guess what? The second class was even crazier. The first had begun quiet- but everything just kept getting louder and louder. I was so shocked no one was coming in to make sure we were quiet! And they really wanted to use their English books! Now none of us were really going to go by the books- the Chinese English teachers didn’t really clarify if they wanted anything taught, and we weren’t sure how to get that done or anything, so… anyways, I finally let them pull out their books because they were so desperate for it, and we did an assignment or two before closing.

The kids are adorable, don’t get me wrong, and they always say hello to us everywhere all the time. But in the classroom that first day, it was so overwhelming!

Now, Katie’s done this in Ukraine before, right? So I thought maybe she’d have a magic trick up her sleeve. So I followed her down to her first class.

She had the Grade 1 first, I believe? Or 2, it’s hard to tell the difference. Either way, it was insane. She couldn’t do a thing, and I didn’t want to interfere and take away her authority or anything, so I just sat in the corner. However Katie got lucky and one of the other teachers came in and quieted them down like three times. No idea why I didn’t get that…

But yeah. Definitely need a discipline rule set up.

So Katie taught her next class and I went up to email my family and let them know how things turned out.  After that, Katie and I grabbed dinner, then we had ‘Activity Time’ with the kids. Which is basically part of their recess after dinner where we can play with them. It was smaller kids this time, so we taught them Ring Around the Rosies and Duck, Duck, Goose which were huge hits.

Before that: so far, Katie and I are really enjoying the cafeteria food. Bits of it, really, we don’t eat everything. I tried an edge of a pig’s hoof [warning: it’s basically just fat and bone, though it looks good at first. But in most books about being in China, they do warn against eating the fat, which I never do anything. I did find a meaty part, however, but that wasn’t anything special. I was actually very disappointed in it. Didn’t try the chicken feet yet! Still working up the courage for that. And Katie refuses to try it, which dampens my enthusiasm so… it might take a while, folks], and some really spicy foods. But a lot of it is still really good, and I always love, love, love their rolls. Quite different, but still delicious.

[Katie and I have decided one of my greatest strengths is Adaptability, by the way. Apparently I give off this show of being a highclass white girl on occasion or something, but I have yet to get sick [though I got a sore/worn out throat after yelling so much on Monday], or freak out over anything. Well, I sort of jumped the other day. I didn’t see this guy carrying a big goose in his arms until it nearly touched me, and it just really got me by surprise.]

So Greg and Abby wanted to celebrate and go to Pizza Hut. Since we have one in town somewhere.

Except we all boarded the bus not knowing where. And by then, my worn out throat was really bothering me and Katie was still a bit sick with the headcold. Unfortunately, we never found it on the way through the entire line of bus 69- and it goes for a whole one hour and fifteen minutes. We had to get off at the end and get on another 69 heading back.

After a stop or two back in our direction, Greg and Abby decided to get off and try to find it  out on the streets, which was definitely a cool brave move. But Katie and I were exhausted so we stayed on- and slept most of the way back to the final stop, our stop. We spent nearly 3 hours on a round trip. We’re definitely not complaining about the experience- it was only 2 Yuan total for us each, and we got to see a bit of the city at night. Sure we stopped at some definite ghetto spots, but we really enjoyed what we were awake for.

We got home, and crashed. Quite the first day of school.